Rep. Jordan: IG report says McCabe lied four times about leaks

John SextonPosted at 1:21 pm on March 30, 2018

Thursday night Laura Ingraham reported a small scoop about the forthcoming Inspector General report which led to the firing of Andrew McCabe earlier this month. The report hasn’t been released to the public yet but last night Ingraham had on two GOP representatives who have both seen a copy.

“He didn’t lie just once, he lied four times,” Rep. Jim Jordan said. He continued, “He lied to James Comey. He lied to the Office of Professional Responsibility and he lied twice under oath to the Inspector General.”

Rep. Mark Meadows added, “Everybody is saying this is political in nature, but when you read the report you see that it’s not political because under oath and certainly with the investigation, it was a real problem.” Meadows went on to say that the Attorney General’s decision not to appoint a second special prosecutor was “extremely disappointing.”

Yesterday, AG Sessions wrote a letter to Reps. Goodlatte and Gowdy and Sen. Grassley saying he would not be appointing a second special counsel but had asked a US attorney in Utah to look over certain issues and determine whether further investigation (including the creation of a second special counsel) was warranted.

“I don’t know why the Attorney General keeps postponing this,” Jordan said. He added, “Everyone in town knows we need a second special counsel to get to the bottom of this.”

Getting back to McCabe, yesterday a “Friends of Andrew McCabe” GoFundMe site was set up to solicit money for his legal defense. From Reuters:

A statement on the GoFundMe internet page unveiled earlier on Thursday said the goal was to raise $150,000 from the public but it was raised to $250,000 because of a response that “has been remarkable and beyond our expectations.”

The action represents an escalation of the battle between McCabe and the administration over his firing amid heavy criticism by President Donald Trump.

A day later the page has raised $440,515. Here’s what the page itself says the money will be used for:

Media reports indicate that at a minimum, there are a number of congressional inquiries that he will be required to respond to, as well as the broader Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation that is ongoing, and any potential lawsuits he might consider.

Mr. McCabe’s legal team is being led by former Department of Justice Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP.

So it sounds as if he plans to go on the attack against the IG report. McCabe has previously said the IG investigation was part of an administration effort to discredit him:

The OIG’s focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens.

That seemed like a pretty wild claim to make at the time. Now that he has a war chest to fund his defense, I guess we’ll find out if he has anything to back up those claims. Here’s the interview with Reps. Jordan and Meadows.